Wooden Town Hall in Sulmierzyce

In the middle of the market square in Sulmierzyce stands a white, plastered building with a shingle roof and a turret whose weather vane bears the date 1743. Beneath the plaster are log walls: this is the only fully preserved wooden town hall in Poland. Since 1957 it has housed a regional museum, so alongside the architecture you can see guild chests, clocks and a late Gothic baptismal font.

History: a town hall that outlived the fires

A town hall in Sulmierzyce is first recorded in 1647. That building, also wooden, fell victim to fires in 1658 and 1710. The present town hall was built in 1743, a date repeated in the inscription "ANNO DOM. 1743" on the beam above the entrance. Alterations in 1879 lowered the tower, removed the clock and took down the arcaded galleries. A major renovation in 1956–1957 gave the roof its shingles, and work in 1991–1994 uncovered the carpentry frames around the openings and the profiled ceiling beams.

The town itself goes back a long way. Sulmierzyce appears in records in 1420, received its town charter in 1457 from King Casimir IV Jagiellon, and in 1972 lost its town status for a year, regaining it after residents protested. It was also the birthplace of the poet Sebastian Fabian Klonowic, later mayor of Lublin, after whom the museum is named.

What to see

• The building itself: a free-standing, two-storey block on a rectangular plan, a hipped shingle roof, and arcades on wooden posts along three sides.
• The double external staircase leading to the entrance on the upper floor.
• The original layout: the mayor's office and the council chamber upstairs, and on the ground floor the former archive, treasury and town jail.
• The museum collection: archaeology and history on the ground floor, ethnography upstairs, oil lamps, clocks, guild chests, items of the marksmen's guild including a target shield from 1882, and a late Gothic font from the local church.

Interesting facts

In 1974 Polish Post issued a stamp showing the Sulmierzyce town hall in a series on Polish folk architecture. The museum also looks after the wooden post mill "Jakub" from 1795 on Poznańska Street, with its traditional machinery and an exhibition on milling.

Tripto tip

You can admire the town hall from the square at any time; allow 30–45 minutes for the museum. Admission is charged, with standard and reduced tickets. Opening hours vary by season and we could not find them in a current official source, so contact the museum or the town office before you go. Sulmierzyce lies about 12 km south-east of Krotoszyn on the road to Ostrzeszów.